This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park Brooklyn in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Note: archive at right.

Though a Municipal Art Society (MAS) survey on livability released yesterday garnered headlines for its seemingly counter-intuitive conclusion that most New Yorkers are happy and find the city livable, it also contains signs of significant discontent regarding development.

And that wariness--72 percent seemingly oppose new housing or housing beyond existing scale in their neighborhoods--suggests a tension between those who like neighborhood scale and the Bloomberg administration's expectation of another 1 million people here by 2030.

Results of this initial poll were not particularly subtle--it would be important to understand attitudes toward development teased out by type of neighborhood, zoning, and transportation options, because the key question is fitting increased density to neighborhoods that can handle it.

(That has not been done consistently, as NYU's Furman Center for Real Eastate & Urban Policy described in March.)

Nearly 4 in 10 (37%) New Yorkers oppose more housing development in their communities but 42% support the development of small businesses that fit into their neighborhoods.

There's a lot more nuance, so let's tease out the summary sentence on Housing Development:

Overall, when it comes to housing in their neighborhoods, 21% of New Yorkers feel the priority should be to preserve and restore existing buildings; 14% say to build new housing but only in the style of existing housing; 28% to build new housing which is affordable regardless of the style; and 37% of New Yorkers say there shouldn't be any more housing development in their neighborhoods.

So that's 51% who say no new housing beyond the current style. And another 21% say the priority is preservation and restoration of existing buildings--which could be seen as saying no new housing.

Affordable housing a priority

At least according to the way the question was worded, only 28% of respondents prioritize affordable housing over scale

It would be very helpful to see the results in a more granular fashion, segmented, for example, by neighborhood. With such results, we could understand how residents might feel about transitional neighborhoods such as the northwest segment of Prospect Heights, with both manufacturing and residential buildings and near transit.

Instead, we get results by borough and Brooklynites-- not surprisingly, given the demand for housing--are more amenable to making affordable housing a priority.

Some 38% of Brooklynites prioritize affordable housing, as opposed to 28% overall. Regarding preservation and housing only at the same scale, the results for Brooklynites are 22% and 12%. That leaves 28% favoring no more housing at all. (See p. 30 of the data analysis here.)

Housing over infrastructure

At a press conference yesterday, I asked MAS President Vin Cipolla about the tension between the poll results and the city's expected growth.

People see buildings going up, Cipolla responded, but they don't see related investment in infrastructure. Yes, "transit-centered development" is a start, but too often people don't see the transit enhanced.

(While the Atlantic Yards plan would add a new subway entrance, significantly to serve the arena, but also to serve the neighborhood, it wouldn't enhance service.)

People have to think the additional housing has added to the quality of life, he said. "The answer is: it hasn't."

One example of a selling point: in Williamsburg, it was mentioned later, the new development (such as the New Domino plan) is supposed to add access to the waterfront.

Drilling down into the poll

Those surveyed were asked:

Overall, are you very satisfied, satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with New York City?

Some 57% said they were satisfied and 27% said they were very satisfied.

They were also asked "Overall, in your life, would you say you are... " and 57% said they were happy and 34% very happy. That obviously depends on factors beyond city efforts at livability, such as family.

Some commenters on the CityRoom site were surprised:

Surprising to hear so many were positive about NYC.

As a native New Yorker, I and many of my friends, find NYC incredibly grim and depressing. NYC has turned into a playground of the rich and entitled.

The income inequality is appalling, the bus and subway system is expensive and deteriorating, there is too much development, neighborhood shops disappear and are replaced by chains, the infrastructure is falling apart, and there are more homeless people all over.

Labels

Comments

I think community opposition to NYU's development of it's tower-in-the-park superblocks in Greenwich Village provides some interesting insights into the issue of so-called "over" development.

Here is a location that is easily accessible to all of the city's subways lines, etc.; a site that with lots of underutilized, vacuous, suburban-style open space; a site that is less densely developed than surrounding areas; a site where the construction of new buildings would not require offsite relocation of tenants; and so on -- and yet there are still many residents of the area who are still opposed to pretty much any new additional development for the site.

While that's part of the lawsuit, more prominent are claims of racial discrimination and retaliation, with black employees claiming repeated abuse by white supervisors, preferential treatment toward Hispanic colleagues, and retaliation in response to complaints.

Two individual supervisors, for example, are charged with referring to black employees as “black motherfucker,” “dumb black bitch,” “black monkey,” “piece of shit” and “nigger.”

Two have referred to an employee blind in one eye as “cyclops,” and “the one-eyed guy,” and an employee with a nose disorder as “the nose guy.”

There's been no official response yet though arena spokesman Barry Baum told the Daily News they, but take “allegations of this kind very seriously” and have "a zero tolerance policy for…

To supporters of Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards project, it's a long-awaited plan for long-overlooked land. "The Atlantic Yards area has been available for any developer in America for over 100 years,” declared Borough President Marty Markowitz at a 5/26/05 City Council hearing.

Charles Gargano, chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, mused on 11/15/05 to WNYC's Brian Lehrer, “Isn’t it interesting that these railyards have sat for decades and decades and decades, and no one has done a thing about them.” Forest City Ratner spokesman Joe DePlasco, in a 12/19/04 New York Times article ("In a War of Words, One Has the Power to Wound") described the railyards as "an empty scar dividing the community."

But why exactly has the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Vanderbilt Yard never been developed? Do public officials have some responsibility?

At right is a photo of a poster spotted in Hasidic Williamsburg right. Clearly there's an event scheduled at the Barclays Center aimed at the Haredi Jewish community (strict Orthodox Jews who reject secular culture), but the lack of English text makes it cryptic.

The website Matzav.com explains, Protest Against Israeli Draft of Bnei Yeshiva Rescheduled for Barclays Center:
A large asifa to protest the drafting of bnei yeshiva in Eretz Yisroel into the Israeli army that had been set to take place this month will instead be held on Sunday, 17 Sivan/June 11, at the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn, NY.
So attendees at a big gathering will protest an apparent change of policy that will make it much more difficult for traditional Orthodox Jewish students--both Hasidic (who follow a rebbe) and non-Hasidic (who don't)--to get deferments from the draft. Comments on the Yeshiva World website explain some of the debate.

First mentioned in April, the Atlantic Yards project in Atlanta is moving ahead--and has the potential to nudge Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn further down in Google searches.

According to a 5/30/17 press release, Hines and Invesco Real Estate Announce T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards:
Hines, the international real estate firm, and Invesco Real Estate, a global real estate investment manager, today announced a joint venture on behalf of one of Invesco Real Estate’s institutional clients to develop two progressive office projects in Atlanta totalling 700,000 square feet. T3 West Midtown will be a 200,000-square-foot heavy timber office development and Atlantic Yards will consist of 500,000 square feet of progressive office space in two buildings. Both projects are located on sites within Atlantic Station in the flourishing Midtown submarket.
Hines will work with Hartshorne Plunkard Architecture (HPA) as the design architect for both T3 West Midtown and Atlantic Yards. DLR Group will be t…

Pacific Park Brooklyn is seriously delayed, Forest City Realty Trust said yesterday in a news release, which further acknowledged that the project has caused a $300 million impairment, or write-down of the asset, as the expected revenues no longer exceed the carrying cost.

The Cleveland-based developer, parent of Brooklyn-based Forest City Ratner, which is a 30% investor in Pacific Park along with 70% partner/overseer Greenland USA, blamed the "significant impairment" on an oversupply of market-rate apartments, the uncertain fate of the 421-a tax break, and a continued increase in construction costs.

While the delay essentially confirms the obvious, given that two major buildings have not launched despite plans to do so, it raises significant questions about the future of the project, including:if market-rate construction is delayed, will the affordable h…

Real Estate Weekly, reporting on trends in Chinese investment in New York City, on 11/18/15 quoted Jim Costello, a senior vice president at research firm Real Capital Analytics:
“They’re typically building high-end condos, build it and sell it. Capital return is in a few years. That’s something that is ingrained in the companies that have been coming here because that’s how they’ve grown in the last 35 years. It’s always been a development game for them. So they’re just repeating their business model here,” he said.
When I read that last November, I didn't think it necessarily applied to Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park, now 70% owned (outside of the Barclays Center and B2 modular apartment tower), by the Greenland Group, owned significantly by the Shanghai government.
A majority of the buildings will be rentals, some 100% market, some 100% affordable, and several--the last several built--are supposed to be 50% market/50% subsidized. (See tentative timetable below.)Selling development …

As I've written, Mayor Bill de Blasio sure knows how to steer and spin coverage of his affordable housing initiatives.

Indeed, his latest announcement, claiming significant progress, came with a pre-press release op-ed in the New York Daily News and then a friendly photo-op press conference with an understandably grateful--and very lucky--winner of an affordable housing lottery.

To me, though, the most significant quote came from Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen, who, as the Wall Street Journal reported:
said public housing had been “starved” of federal support for years now, leaving the city with fewer ways of creating affordable housing. “Are we relying too heavily on the private sector?” she said. “There is no alternative.”
Though Glen was using what she surely sees as a common-sense phrase, it recalls the slogan of a politician with whom I doubt de Blasio identifies: former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative who believed in free markets.